I. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to communication, and more specifically to transmission techniques for wireless communication.
II. Background
Wireless communication networks are widely deployed to provide various communication services such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, etc. These wireless networks may be capable of supporting communication for multiple users by sharing the available network resources. Examples of such wireless networks include wireless wide area networks (WWANs) providing communication coverage for large geographic areas, wireless metropolitan area networks (WMANs) providing communication coverage for medium geographic areas, and wireless local area networks (WLANs) providing communication coverage for small geographic areas.
It may be desirable to improve the coverage of a wireless network. This may be achieved by using relay stations. A relay station may receive a signal from a first station (e.g., a source station), process (e.g., demodulate and decode) the received signal to recover data sent in the signal, generate a relay signal based on the recovered data, and send the relay signal to a second station (e.g., a destination station). The use of relay stations may increase network capacity and improve energy efficiency in the wireless network. However, the use of relay stations may also increase overhead and incur other penalties.